How will your poems be judged? By meter, rhyme, cleverness, and humor. (If you’re feeling a bit fuzzy about limerick writing rules, here’s my How To Write A Limerick article.)

I’ll announce the Limerick of the Week Winner next Sunday, right before I post next week’s Limerick-Off. So that gives you a full week to submit your clever, polished verse. Your submission deadline is Saturday at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Time.)

I hope you’ll join me in writing a limerick with this first line:

A gal who was very refined…*

or

A man who was very refined…*

*(Minor variations to my first lines are acceptable, but rhyme words may not be altered.)

Here’s my limerick:

Refined Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane

A gal who was very refined
Found herself in a terrible bind.
She’d been tied up in knots
By two trumpeting Scots.
Her muted response: “Do you mind?”

Please feel free to write your own limerick using the same first line and post it in my comments. And if you’re on Facebook, I hope you’ll join my friends in that same activity on my Facebook Limerick-Off post.

My great-aunts were very refined.
When visiting I was inclined
To curtsey so low
That often I’d go
Flat down on my girlish behind.

I loved my mother’s Victorian-born aunts, and knew they loved me, but I could be terrified as well.
When they hosted a gathering of ladies, my sister and I had the job of passing plates of cookies, tarts and hors d’ouevre, as well as carrying tiny silver trays of cream and sugar and wielding silver sugar tongs.
As we weren’t particularly graceful (let’s face it, we were born klutzes) this “honor,” which was intended to contribute to our ladylike upbringing, was usually two hours of torture during which we were expected to smile sweetly at all the old dears who visited “the aunties.”